I’ve always come back to music for answers, despite it never giving me any conclusions.
At some point I’d thought it was because of sadness and pain that music was really powerful and helpful, but I have also found in times of no trouble that it is what I turn to as well.
It is a healthy load to bear.
I also used to think that it was in song writing that you could work to effectively “shave off” pain or darkness.
But lately I’ve been thinking that not only is it better to remove “topic” from the practice for the purpose of speaking more eloquently with the instrument instead, but it’s a healthier and more ethical approach to living the practice of music.
The work that there is to do improving at playing guitar is something that unfolds continuously.
It is hard to flow in any task completely unhindered by the elements of the task, but in playing an instrument that’s largely what the task itself is.
I’ve studied music but what I find is the core, that childish “why?” of the whole thing is not really explained anywhere when it comes down to it academically.
When people hear harmonies and grooves, the emotional and physical reactions they can experience is largely subjective and never gets definitively put in terms of a ‘dom7th” or anything like that. Literally “see? it sounds happy, this one is major!” is equivalent as good as anything you will get from going down the rabbit hole.
When people experience similar reactions from music there’s usually very little need to describe it with many words at all.
So, I’ve always rotated some Buckethead since a friend showed me him in 2007, but I had been following him more in the last year and catching up with his “recent” releases. A week or two I noticed this new post on Bucketheads site and thought it pretty apt how on point it was for something I already wanted to write today;
When I started the WORLDER music project on youtube/bandcamp by working on and uploading the Grind and Statis Field albums, the initial intention was to release some songs I had already written, but I wanted to improve on my mixing and getting tones first before working on those songs. Statis Field and Grind were supposed to be work towards that improvement.
Only just now am I finally working on those older songs, and Statis Field was finished 7 years ago in 2018.
What I’m finding ironic is that as I’m at this point upheaving the baggage and taking these songs to task, I’ve started listening to Buckethead again and remembering 10 years ago back when I used to listen to Bhead a lot how much it was an empowering source of drive in my life. This time, it’s really rekindled my love of playing and feeling music through the guitar again, and has me practicing rudiments for the first time in a decade to make a dedicated improvement on dexterity and mechanics – instead of just playing it without this sort of goal for improvement. Buckethead’s goofy flavors empower the emotionally saturated licks on his Blue Tide pike, and it’s his compelling library of being able to continually add flavor and texture to tracks like that which is demonstrative of the practice and drilling that has gone into Buckethead. It’s made me realize I have often been getting interested in sonic novelty as well, when I taste the relevant freshness of Buckethead’s avant-garde note adventures and realise it is not really being used in too novel of a way but instead is tonally relevant to the blues and always a distinguishable guitar tone. It’s a little regrettable actually as I was finishing school I had decided to put more interest into song writing because it was the tool that would let me make things I wanted, so while it was helpful to think differently I’m very keen to practice again. A lot of great music I’ve played at this point has been improvised on a guitar that I would just let die with the day, and it’s exciting to want to nurture that more and to have more rhythmic precision to communicate consistently with the instrument.
I’m finding it ironic listening to Buckethead and reading that post because I do find myself being a bit disrupted or held back because of the way I have some songs I’ve worked on for a while or had for a while holding dear. It really is a disruption to me just being able to cut the crap and get to playing an instrument properly and often.
If we’re speaking about development, I would suggest that it is more integral to be proactive about musically “playing”, than it is to know music in any other way!
Anyway, despite that, this selection of songs I’ve worked on will be finished and put up as an album in the coming months. I’m really excited to finally be done with that as well as release a lot more guitar pieces.
On a different note, one thing I can’t seem to agree with is just about any type of creator charging money to RELEASE their work. In my opinion, it’s a case of copyright gone wrong or something. I don’t really think releasing work that people wouldn’t do on their own accord anyway should even really be encouraged. I think most would still exist in that case and if it’s good and there’s a lot of it, that’s really good just to have. I’m not confident in the songs being what becomes the product of the industry. I can understand charging for showing up to live performance or licensing tshirts for sale but I think conflict of interest starts to get weird when you make the byproduct of creativity into an actual product.
To that point, because I don’t tour or anything at the moment, and it might make a nice connection to do things this way, I’d like you to know I’d use any money that I do get coming through my paypal donations and pass it on to Bucketheads pike shop & then I can report back what merch I got. So please leave me a message if you use it~
I’m going to use the money in it already to try to buy a shirt.
<3 u Seb!